“I believe I could get you Elwood's quarter interest for just about twenty-five hundred dollars. Are you interested?”

“That's a lot of money.”

“But I'm pulling in near to two hundred dollars every month, averaged out. And it would be more if we was to keep Bowman from taking the gold into town. You'd make your money back in less than a year. Now that's a good investment. And you got those boys. We could move a lot more dirt with four extra men working. I'm telling you, Power, this here is opportunity.”

“Let me think on it. I would want to talk to the boys about it.”

“There you go. I'll get in touch with Mr. Elwood while I'm in town, find out how much he'll take for his share. This is opportunity. Golden opportunity. The only thing better than gold for making money is whiskey, and that's illegal. This ain't.”

They had, all together, a little over a thousand dollars, earned with the strenuous and sporadic efforts that only the poor can exert. Jeff thought the mine was a good risk. Charlie, always the cautious one, had grave doubts. That thousand dollars would go a long way toward making their cattle ranching prosper. The thousand meant new fences, corrals, new stock, and a means of surviving a weak market without selling off the entire herd.

The one Jeff could count on was Tom. Tom had inherited Jeff's vision and the gambler's instinct to try to make big money out of little money. If they were to lose everything, Tom would simply start over, as Jeff would. All gambling involved risk. Anyone who didn't know that was a fool. But any man who was unwilling to gamble was a bigger fool.

And that left John. John, unlike Tom, didn't like to think. He wasn't good at it, and he was smart enough not to fool himself. John was muscle and determination. Once someone told him what needed to be done, he went forward, always straight ahead, never complaining or giving up. But both Tom and Charlie had long ago figured John out. It wasn't hard. And they could control John easily. He never questioned their arguments, however arcane or thin. And both Tom and Charlie moved John first one way, then the other. Either Charlie or Tom would figure out how to do something and then set John to work at it. It was an arrangement that seemed to satisfy them all.